This symposium on American Folk Medicine, the first of its kind ever to be held in America, will accomplish several worthwhile purposes: 1. It will bring together people from such different disciplines as anthropology and ethnology, psychology and psychiatry, the medical sciences, botany and pharmacognosy, and folklore and mythology. 2. In a well structured and unhurried program it will be possible to explore the differing philosophical and methodological approaches of scientists to similar bodies of medical and folk medical data. As is to be expected, this scholarly give-and-take will show similarities as well as differences of conception at the folk level itself. 3. The borrowing and adaptation of therapeutic procedures by the invading dominant group will be seen as a startling reversal of patterns in acculturation, but so will the utilization of European folk medical beliefs and practices on the part of the native peoples. 4. Magical medicine will receive its just scholarly due at last, alongside botanic or natural medicine. 5. The conference will insure future cooperative scholarly efforts on the part of people in the various disciplines mentioned. 6. The published proceedings will spread abroad to the scientific community the insights gained and will serve as a rallying point for future work in the field.